Yep, feels like that to me too.
"I've grown to not like it either because it implies a pejorative"
By the conservative right. The opposite of what it really is, a positive.
That's a good reason for just using aware and active, instead of it.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”